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Contents

D&D organizes community size to establish basic guidelines on he relationship between community size and production. This page offers further guidance on this subject. The first three types of communities are thorp, hamlet, and village. All three of these represent food gathering and food producing communities, but the first, like individual families living in the wilderness don't necessarily have the productive capacity of larger communities. People may make their own tools, and travel to nearby hamlets and villages for additional tools.
Many demographic lists of craftsmen are based on the 1292 Paris tax census, and are appropriate for cities, but not necessarily towns or smaller communities.

Hamlets and villages are food producing communities and the tools and materials produced there are for food production.
Every village will have, and every hamlet will need proximity to a miller, blacksmith, leatherworker, carpenter, and stonemason.
Villages will also usually have bronzesmiths, weavers, potters, salters, and brewers.
Other crafts, including bone and antler worker, are uncommon but require little capital investment and might be in any community. Charcoal burners are not often in communities, but out in the woods. Nevertheless every forge or craft oven needs charcoal. In some places, vintners replace brewers as beverage producers.

A hamlet has 81-400 inhabitants and a gold piece limit of 100 gp. That means that only items under 100 gp can be readily purchased. Objects are produced above that limit on a commission basis.
Hamlets will usually have no more than 1st levelcommoners and experts because there usually are not enough challenging tasks in so small a village to give them sufficient experience to gain levels. Experts are normally 3% of the population. While the craftsmen of a hamlet are disproportionally likely to be experts, because of the skills intensive nature of crafts, some portion of the experts may well be farmers or herders.

A village has 401-900 inhabitants and a gold piece limit of 200 gp. That means that only items under 200 gp can be readily purchased. Objects are produced above that limit on a commission basis.
Villages will be composed mostly of 1st level commoners and experts as described on page 139 of the DMG. Experts are normally 3% of the population. While the craftsmen of a hamlet are disproportionally likely to be experts, because of the skills intensive nature of crafts, some portion of the experts may well be farmers or herders.
The highest level local determination on page 139 of the DMG might be replaced by a more BIRTHRIGHT-specific mechanic. Instead of using the table on page 139, simply assume the highest level character in a village or town is the same as the province level. Then as mentioned on page 138, assume there are twice as many characters of half that level, including the observation that after calculating PC class characters and leveled NPC class characters, everyone that remains is a 1st level NPC class character.

Specialization of labor begins with complex societies so that even Rjurik and Vos tribes have some labor specialization. But complete labor specialization of specific tasks occurs well after the economic development of medieval societies. So, it would be very uncommon to find someone who makes boots, but doesn't make shoes. Instead, cities will have cobblers who specialize in all kinds of footwear. In towns some such cobblers will exist to make fine shoes and boots, but average footwear will be obtained at a leather worker who makes a variety of leather goods. In villages the leather worker will make average shoes and boots, along with many other goods, and peasants will make poor footwear themselves. The same is true of clothes, bone and antler, and wooden objects. A village may have a craftsman who works in bone and antler, crafting hilts for knives, for example, or fish hooks. A village with such a craftsman will make many or most of these kinds of items, while some peasants either by choice or circumstance will make their own. So that every farmer is a part time cobbler, carpenter, weaver, tailor, and bone and antler worker. The smaller the community, the more likely that a specialized craftsman won't exist and peasants will either make such items themselves, or undertake the hardship of traveling to another village or a town to buy such goods.
Likewise, craftsmen in small communities will frequently not have enough work in their craft to subsist on. So, it will be common even for millers and blacksmiths in hamlets and small villages to own some small acreage for supplementary farming. It may be as small as a large garden or as large as several acres.